2007-06-26

Lawrence of Arabia tells a tale

Sunset came down, delightfully red, and after the feast the whole party
lay round the outside coffee-hearth lingering under the stars, while
Auda and others told us stories. In a pause I remarked casually that I
had looked for Mohammed el Dheilan in his tent that afternoon, to thank
him for the milch camel he had given me, but had not found him. Auda
shouted for joy, till everybody looked at him; and then, in the silence
which fell that they might learn the joke, he pointed to Mohammed
sitting dismally beside the coffee mortar, and said in his huge voice:--

'Ho! Shall I tell why Mohammed for fifteen days has not slept in his
tent?' Everybody chuckled with delight, and conversation stopped; all
the crowd stretched out on the ground, chins in hands, prepared to take
the good points of the story which they had heard perhaps twenty times.
The women, Auda's three wives, Zaal's wife, and some of Mohammed's, who
had been cooking, came across, straddling their bellies in the billowy
walk which came of carrying burdens on their heads, till they were near
the partition-curtain; and there they listened like the rest while Auda
told at length how Mohammed had bought publicly in the bazaar at Wejh a
costly string of pearls, and had not given it to any of his wives, and
so they were all at odds, except in their common rejection of him.

The story was, of course, a pure invention -- Auda's elvish humour
heightened by the stimulus of Revolt -- and the luckless Mohammed, who had
dragged through the fortnight guesting casually with one or other of
the tribesmen, called upon God for mercy, and upon me for witness that
Auda lied. I cleared my throat solemnly. Auda asked for silence, and
begged me to confirm his words.

I began with the introducing phrase of a formal tale: In the name of
God the merciful, the loving-kind. We were six in Wejh. There were
Auda, and Mohammed, and Zaal, Gasim el Shimt, Mufaddhi and the poor man
(myself); and one night just before dawn, Auda said, 'Let us make a
raid against the market'. And we said, 'in the name of God'. And we
went; Auda in a white robe and a red head-cloth, and Kasim sandals of
pieced leather; Mohammed in a silken tunic of 'seven kings' and
barefoot; Zaal ... I forget Zaal. Gasim wore cotton, and Mufaddhi was
in silk of blue stripes with an embroidered head-cloth. Your servant
was as your servant.'

My pause was still with astonishment. This was a close parody of Auda's
epic style; and I mimicked also his wave of the hand, his round voice,
and the rising and dropping tone which emphasized the points, or what
he thought were points, of his pointless stories. The Howeitat [tribe] sat
silent as death, twisting their full bodies inside their sweat-stiffened
shirts for joy, and staring hungrily at Auda; for they all recognized the
original, and parody was a new art to them and to him. The coffee man,
Mufaddhi, a Shammar refugee from the guilt of blood, himself a character,
forgot to pile fresh thorns on his fire for fixity of listening to the
tale.

I told how we left the tents, with a list of the tents, and how we
walked down towards the village, describing every camel and horse we
saw, and all the passers-by, and the ridges, 'all bare of grazing, for
by God that country was barren. And we marched: and after we had
marched the time of a smoked cigarette, we heard something, and Auda
stopped and said, 'Lads, I hear something'. And Mohammed stopped and
said, 'Lads, I hear something'. And Zaal, 'By God, you are right'. And
we stopped to listen, and there was nothing, and the poor man said, 'By
God, I hear nothing'. And Zaal said, 'By God, I hear nothing'. And
Mohammed said, 'By God, I hear nothing'. And Auda said, 'By God, you
are right'.

'And we marched and we marched, and the land was barren, and we heard
nothing. And on our right hand came a man, a negro, on a donkey. The
donkey was grey, with black ears, and one black foot, and on its
shoulder was a brand like this' (a scrabble in the air), 'and its tail
moved and its legs: Auda saw it, and said, 'By God, a donkey'. And
Mohammed said, 'By the very God, a donkey and a slave'. And we marched.
And there was a ridge, not a great ridge, but a ridge as great as from
the here to the what-do-you-call-it (hi biliyeh el hok) that is yonder:
and we marched to the ridge and it was barren. That land is barren:
barren: barren.

'And we marched: and beyond the what-do-you-call-it there was a
what-there-is as far as hereby from thence, and thereafter a ridge: and
we came to that ridge, and went up that ridge: it was barren, all that
land was barren: and as we came up that ridge, and were by the head of
that ridge, and came to the end of the head of that ridge, by God, by
my God, by very God, the sun rose upon us.'

It ended the session. Everyone had heard that sunrise twenty times, in
its immense bathos; an agony piled up of linked phrases, repeated and
repeated with breathless excitement by Auda to carry over for hours the
thrill of a raiding story in which nothing happened; and the trivial
rest of it was exaggerated the degree which made it like one of Auda's
tales; and yet, also, the history of the walk to market at Wejh which
many of us had taken. The tribe was in waves of laughter on the ground.

Auda laughed the loudest and longest, for he loved a jest upon himself;
and the fatuousness of my epic had shown him his own sure mastery of
descriptive action. He embraced Mohammed, and confessed the invention
of the necklace. In gratitude Mohammed invited the camp to breakfast
with him in his regained tent on the morrow, an hour before we started
for the swoop on Akaba. We should have a sucking camel-calf boiled in
sour milk by his wives: famous cooks, and a legendary dish!

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